New Lifetime High Reached: Blackhawk Network Holdings (HAWK)

Editor's Note: Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of TheStreet, Inc. or any of its contributors including Jim Cramer or Stephanie Link.

Trade-Ideas LLC identified Blackhawk Network Holdings ( HAWK) as a new lifetime high candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Blackhawk Network Holdings as such a stock due to the following factors:

HAWK has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $14.3 million.

Blackhawk Network Holdings, Inc. provides various prepaid products and payment services. It distributes digital media and e-commerce, dining, electronics, entertainment, fashion, gasoline, home improvement, and travel closed loop gift cards; and single-use non-reloadable gift cards. HAWK has a PE ratio of 37.1. Currently there are 5 analysts that rate Blackhawk Network Holdings a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 6 rate it a hold.

The average volume for Blackhawk Network Holdings has been 478,400 shares per day over the past 30 days. Blackhawk Network has a market cap of $460.8 million and is part of the financial sector and financial services industry. Shares are up 48.5% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Thursday.

TheStreet Quant Ratings rates Blackhawk Network Holdings as a hold. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its robust revenue growth, notable return on equity and expanding profit margins. However, as a counter to these strengths, we also find weaknesses including unimpressive growth in net income and weak operating cash flow.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

The revenue growth greatly exceeded the industry average of 6.3%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues rose by 30.6%. This growth in revenue does not appear to have trickled down to the company's bottom line, displayed by a decline in earnings per share.

Compared to other companies in the IT Services industry and the overall market on the basis of return on equity, BLACKHAWK NETWORK HLDGS INC has underperformed in comparison with the industry average, but has exceeded that of the S&P 500.

The debt-to-equity ratio is somewhat low, currently at 0.77, and is less than that of the industry average, implying that there has been a relatively successful effort in the management of debt levels. Although the company had a strong debt-to-equity ratio, its quick ratio of 0.92 is somewhat weak and could be cause for future problems.

The company, on the basis of change in net income from the same quarter one year ago, has significantly underperformed against the S&P 500 and did not exceed that of the IT Services industry. The net income has significantly decreased by 76.4% when compared to the same quarter one year ago, falling from $2.36 million to $0.56 million.

Net operating cash flow has declined marginally to -$52.03 million or 6.36% when compared to the same quarter last year. In conjunction, when comparing current results to the industry average, BLACKHAWK NETWORK HLDGS INC has marginally lower results.